Die Förderung gewerblicher Investitionen durch die Gemeinschaftsaufgabe „Verbesserung der regionalen Wirtschaftsstruktur“: Wie erfolgreich sind die geförderten Betriebe?

Abstract

This paper analyses the growth of firms subsidized by German regional policy. Empirical basis is a linked data set consisting of the social security statistics (“Beschäftigtenstatistik”) and the federal statistics of investment grants (“GRW-Förderstatistik”). Actually, 90% (23,516) of all firms subsidized between 1998 and 2008 are covered in this study. The performance of the subsidized firms was consistently positive. On average, their employment grew by + 4.6% per year from the respective year of subvention until 2008, the end of the period of analysis. Differentiated by the year of subvention, those firms which were recently subsidized grew faster. The growth of subsidized firms is particularly high if they are compared to non-subsidized firms of the same region. In the structurally weak regions of eastern Germany, the change of employment of subsidized firms exceeds the corresponding rate for non-subsidized firms by 11% points per year partly due to the strong increase of subsidized firms and partly due to low performance of the other firms. The growth difference is less distinct in the (few) assisted areas of western Germany. The sectoral structure of subsidized firms is rather unfavourable. Even so, their employment growth is much stronger than structurally expected.

Keywords

• Regional policy
• Investment grants
• Evaluation
• Measurement of results
• Regional economic structure
• Regional employment growth